President Barack Obama embarks on his first trip to South and Central America since taking office when he visits Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador starting Saturday. The trip is long overdue. It now offers an enormous opportunity for Obama and the United States. Latin America is booming, with strong growth rates and historic levels of investment. But, most importantly, it is a part of the world with which we share so much in common, including values; an economic model; a strong commitment to democracy, human rights, and economic empowerment; and a belief that a vibrant, entrepreneurial private sector is critical. A successful trip could be measured as one in which Obama and the leaders of the visited countries better understand the shared vision before us. It has the potential to show our neighbors that we can build a partnership based on mutual respect that will endure because it is in the best interest of all parties.
The president will kick off his five-day tour in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro. This stop in itself is a historic one; both leaders represent "firsts" for their respective countries, with Obama as the first African American U.S. president and Dilma Rousseff as the first Brazilian female president. Rousseff is just months into her presidency and has been vocal about her support for stronger U.S. ties. Obama's "winning the future" strategy represents a huge opportunity, not just for the United States, but for the hemisphere as well.
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One of the great mysteries of American labor four decades ago -- for those of us first encountering its then-dominant culture of blue-collar machismo -- was how anyone known as "Wimpy" (or "Wimp" for short) could become president of an AFL-CIO union. In the militant 1970s, a moniker like that was not a great boon to getting elected shop steward in many workplaces. Patrick Halley's new authorized biography of William Winpisinger (called Wimpy, of course) shows how the International Association of Machinists (IAM) leader transcended his anomalous nickname during a colorful 41-year career. By the time Winpisinger retired in 1989, no one in the top ranks of labor seemed less like J. Wellington Wimpy, the cowardly comic strip pal of Popeye.
The IAM leader was, instead, a very unusual profile in political independence, whose example is worth recalling in 2011. His outspoken criticism of another disappointing Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, stands in sharp contrast to the tabby-cat role that labor leaders seem to be playing at the Obama White House today, no matter how much their members get kicked around on trade deals, health care reform, workers' rights, deficit reduction, or business-friendly appointments. When Carter let unions down on labor law reform and other legislative priorities in the late '70s, Winpisinger wasn't afraid to organize within the Democratic Party to challenge him from the left. "To me," he told an IAM conference in 1978, "President Carter is through. He's a weak, vacillating, and ineffective President."
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Newly elected Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie has decided that he will be the guy to finally settle the whole "birther" conspiracy, a matter that was settled in sane circles before it even began. Slate's Dave Weigel, who has written more substantively about the birthers than anyone else I could name, gets right to the heart of why this is a mistake:
The "birther" movement began not because Barack Obama's campaign refused to show proof of his citizenship, but because it did show proof. In June 2008, it responded to some rumors about whether Obama was born a Muslim or had different parents than had been reported by releasing the short-form certificate, the sort of form you get if you lose your driver's license and need to prove your identity to the DMV to get a new license. This launched a cottage industry of hilarious "document analysis" attempting to prove that the certificate was forged by the Obama campaign. And this is exactly what would happen again if the governor of Hawaii, who knew the Obama family in the 1960s, let reporters photograph more of Obama's documents. The birther crowd would cry "forgery," as the Kennedy assassination and moon landing hoax crowds look for anything that could unravel the official story in every new official analysis.
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On the occasion of the International Human Rights Day, Iran's judicial authorities have surpassed their own cruelty and cynicism in an effort to distract public opinion from their dismal human rights record in particular when it comes to due process of law and the right to defense. Flouting rules and procedures (and common sense), they have dragged in front of the cameras a woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, they have held between life and death for years and whose son they hold hostage. The breaking news here is that she admits to her own guilt in an alleged crime for which she was tried and sentenced years ago and for which she was given the maximum punishment allowed in the law.
Photos of Sakineh and her son Sajjad in their own home circulated yesterday on the web giving some of us a strong and premature sensation of relief. Unfortunately, these were not photos celebrating their release. This was yet another desperate attempt by the Islamic Republic authorities to justify a death sentence that cannot be justified based on Iranian law and international standards. Anyone with knowledge of legal procedures, of the minimum standards for the treatment of prisoners, or plain common sense, will not be fooled by this show of strength from a powerful and brutal state that can and does coerce citizens into confessing to crimes they may or may not have committed.
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Our current governmental structure is precariously poised on the horns of a dilemma. Thanks to the verdict rendered November 2, the ideological and philosophical divide is wider than before. If the American electorate, or at least those who made the effort to vote, intended to reflect an exhaustive and introspective analysis of governance and the inability of one-party rule to solve problems and in their infinite wisdom concluded that split government was the answer, then their colossal miscalculation will soon enough be evident. If, however, the verdict reflects impatience, irritability, and the quintessential quirkiness of a populace used to getting what it wants and wanting to send a loud and unmistakable message to those in power that it is intent on holding its breath until it does, then the upcoming train wreck will certainly make for interesting viewing, and unfortunate consequences.
Either way, to those who are suffering the most: the poor, unemployed, underemployed, health-care deprived, and foreclosed upon, your nightmare is about to be extended. It would be very easy for the shellacked party to throw up its hands, sigh, and proclaim that you get what you deserve. After all, to anyone who either has lost or is in the process of losing their livelihoods and hard-earned material rewards, their unemployment insurance, or who gaze at their children each night and worry and pray that they not get sick, you had a chance to influence the system and the people, those who voted, have spoken.
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The reliability of so-called "internal polls" released by political campaigns and parties is the subject of ongoing debate. Nate Silver has cautioned that such polls should not be taken at face value since they are "almost always designed to drive a media narrative." Silver notes that the topline results can be manipulated by several tricks of the polling trade, such as asking leading questions, or applying implausible likely voter models or demographic weightings. From analysis of such surveys , Silver has devised a rule of thumb under which he subtracts six points from the topline result of the reporting candidate or party. Thus, a poll commissioned by a Democratic candidate showing a race tied translates, under Silver's treatment, into a six-point lead for his or her Republican opponent.
In a similar vein, Mark Blumenthal has stated that "[i]t is always sensible to treat sponsored, internal surveys with extra skepticism when they are publicly released." In support of this view, Blumenthal cites studies by political scientists finding that partisan surveys show an average bias of two to four percentage points favoring the sponsoring party. Blumenthal identifies an additional reason for partisan bias in published internal polls, namely, most internals never see the light of day since campaigns typically choose to share only those polls showing good news for their candidate.
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When learning a new composition, beginning violin, guitar, and piano students focus on which fingers go where and in what order. Later, once the basic techniques are mastered, the teacher introduces the concept of making the notes sound like music by playing them to a certain tempo or time. In essence, tempo and time are concerned with the space between the notes, the duration during which there is either a mere harmonic echo of the note just played, or total silence. Of course, there is anticipation, too, as the listener's brain leaps to the next note automatically or, if he or she doesn't know what that note will be, experiences a delicious period of pure expectation that is sometimes rewarded with something unexpected and sublime.
In common woodworking or even the making of fine furniture, the adage "measure twice, cut once" applies. There is, nonetheless, an experience of contemplation between each phase of the project. After each component is formed, there is a subconscious consideration of how well its manufacture was accomplished, and of how well it will dovetail with the next piece in the production line. There is also an ongoing evaluation -- at least when a master craftsman's hands are involved -- of the overall balance and line of the piece, and whether it will be satisfactory in the end. More than one woodworking project has been scrapped as a result of the mental process that takes place between stages of physical work.
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The great American Dream of owning a home has never looked so impossible to achieve: roughly 1.65 million homes are in the foreclosure pipeline, housing prices are at an all-time low, and nearly 7% of mortgage holders are more than 60 days late on their payments. Despite the dreary picture, there are an ever-increasing number of lifelines for people trying to avoid foreclosure:
One of the biggest national hotlines for free home counseling is 888-995-HOPE, run by the Congress-funded Home Preservation Foundation. To date, the HOPE hotline has counseled four million homeowners since 2008, and helped 70% avoid foreclosure within a year. HOPE is the number to call before you seek a loan modification or expensive legal representation: a counselor will listen to your housing and financial concerns and, if necessary, facilitate a three-way conversation with a third party for additional help. With 550 employees stationed in 8 centers around the country, Diane Zyats, VP of Communications at the Homeownership Preservation Foundation, says there is rarely a backlog of homeowners waiting to receive advice. This, Zyats stresses, is key to preventing a distressed homeowner from falling for one of the many foreclosure scams out there.
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The Huffington Post is proud to announce that we will be interviewing author Gary Shteyngart on Friday, and we'd love to ask him some of your questions. Let us know what we should ask him!
Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad during the Cold War, but went to school in New York and Ohio, and has spent much of his adult life in New York City. He is the author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook (2003) which won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction, Absurdistan (2006), which was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, and the forthcoming novel Super Sad True Love Story (July 27, 2010). His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Slate, and Granta, to name a few.
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During the last years of the Cold War, I had a front row seat as a senior systems designer in the defense industry to one of the most frightening times in the history of the world, and the thinking that led to it. During the last years of the most potentially lethal, yet undeclared, war in human history, the superpowers of the United States and the former Soviet Union did something that seems unthinkable to any rationally minded person today. They spent the time, energy, and human resources to develop and stockpile somewhere in the neighborhood of 65,000 nuclear weapons -- a combined arsenal with the power to microwave the Earth, and everything on it, many times over.
The rationale for such an extreme effort stems from a way of thinking that has dominated much of the modern world for the last 300 years or so, since the beginning of the scientific era. It's based in the false assumptions of scientific thinking that suggest we're somehow separate from the Earth, separate from one another, and that the nature that gives us life is based upon relentless struggle and survival of the strongest. Fortunately, new discoveries have revealed that each of these assumptions is absolutely false. Unfortunately, however, there is a reluctance to reflect such new discoveries in mainstream media, traditional classrooms and conventional textbooks. In other words, we're still teaching our young people the false assumptions of an obsolete way of thinking based on struggle, competition, and war.
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Over the years, we have been advising individuals and leaders in all walks of life and in many of the world's leading organizations in the areas of Innovation and meaning. A few years ago we noticed that something was changing. People told us that they were losing enthusiasm and meaning in both their personal and work lives. Many felt that they were rushing through life, just going through the motions. Many felt that their work lacked meaning, that the products and services they were offering lacked meaning, and that, increasingly, they felt that they weren't making a positive difference in the world around them.
The existential question people kept asking us was: "How can we live more meaningful lives?" So we decided to go in search of an answer. Our journey took us back to Greece, where we visited many traditional Greek villages and were met with amazing hospitality. We danced on the very beach where the character Zorba danced and felt the burdens of life lift from our shoulders. We rose at dawn to watch the fishermen return with their early-morning catches. We walked in the footsteps of the Minoans and marveled at the high quality of life they enjoyed so many millennia ago. We celebrated birthdays, name days, weddings and special holidays with feasts attended by extended families and people from neighboring villages. We sat with indigenous villagers of all ages to listen to their life stories. We explored, we listened and we learned.
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If you asked most college and university presidents where does a dollar of tuition go in their school's budget - how is it partitioned and used - they would be very hard pressed to tell you. It actually is not such an easy question, but it suggests that leaders of these great educational institutions are often less than stellar experts on finances and consequently are not terribly adapt at how to cut costs to limit the growth of tuition and fees at their universities. I have known many presidents and provosts of top tier universities and colleges, some who are actually quite able leaders, who are virtually innumerate - many cannot read a balance sheet, analyze a budget with any sophistication, or understand a spreadsheet. And many have little interest in learning to do so. At their peril, they leave these "dirty" - non-academic - matters to their financial green eyeshade lieutenants1. This should not altogether surprise us since most academic leaders were not selected because of the financial or budgetary skills.
What, then, are some of the reasons for the rising costs of higher education that lead to increases in tuition beyond the level of inflation? Let me provide you with a blueprint of some of the cost factors, concentrating here on two structural features of universities: the increasingly complexity of the institutions and demands made on them by parents, students, and the larger American society; and their "company of equals" governance structures.
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It almost makes you want to live in North Korea. At least there, when a swarthy younger brother is thrust on the nation, you don't have to endure months of mad eyes and fixed smiles, and public mea culpas (on matters of policy you didn't control) and "just a minute" stand-up slots on the subject of "passion" and "change". And when the Dear Leader is finally unveiled, after an election process that Kim Jong-il would surely applaud (one in which some people had 12 votes without even the sniff of a backhander) you don't have to watch a man who has lost in the first three rounds, but scraped through on the fourth, tell the world how much he loves the brother whose dreams he has wrecked.
And you don't have to hear him volunteer, on a programme that's meant to be about politics the next morning, that he loves his brother "very, very much", and you don't have to watch the brother he has defeated, who has the air of a man whose heart has been broken, tell a conference which can't even summon a definite or an indefinite article (but some of us believe in grammar, just as some of us believe that actions speak louder than words) that we have a Great New Leader, and that he is "incredibly proud" of him. At least in North Korea you have a firing squad, which is quicker and cleaner and a lot less painful to watch.
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On Thursday, the House Committee on Administration passed the Fair Elections Now Act — the bill that we, along with many others, have been pushing for the past two years. With a bit of luck, and a lot more pressure, the managers of the bill believe it could have the votes to pass the House as well. If they're right, and if the Speaker allows the bill to come to the floor, then for the first time in a generation, the House will have ratified fundamental and effective campaign finance reform.
This optimism will surprise many of you. As I've travelled to talk about this issue, the overwhelming attitude of people who want better from our government is that our government is incapable of giving us better. The House ratifying Fair Elections would be the first, and best evidence, this skepticism might be wrong. It would also be a testament to the extraordinary work of organizations like Public Campaign and Common Cause (especially the campaign director, David Donnelly), as well as many others, including MoveOn, the Coffee Party, You Street (as in "not K Street") and many of you. This victory would give American voters an idea worth fighting for. It would be a critical victory, at least if we can gather the final few votes needed in the House. (You can help in that by using our Whip Tool).
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On Sunday in DC, I attended the 17th ballpark protest of the Arizona Diamondbacks during the 2011 baseball season. Like the other actions - in cities from Houston to San Francisco to Milwaukee - people chanted a loud and clear message to Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig: move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Arizona and make the state pay a price for enacting legislation that sacrifices immigrant families at the altar of election year politics. But this demonstration was also deeply different from the 16 others. It was a day of rain, risk-takers, racists, and rancor. And it couldn't have been more terrific.
First, the protest was publicly threatened by a pugnacious anti-immigrant organization called Help Save Maryland. This past week, I received a series of emails from people claiming to be connected to the group where they threatened to "swamp" the Move the Game demonstration and drive immigrant rights supporters from the park. They also taunted that my writing on the subject had led to them being "overwhelmed with phone calls and volunteers." For the record, we had 100 people march during the two-hour protest. They had seven. The group was so irrelevant that they went unmentioned - from ESPN to politico.com- in the flurry of subsequent media coverage.
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I've seen, heard, felt and received piles of messages about yoga and weight loss. Does it work? How does it work? And why does it work? These questions only begin to scratch the surface of inquiry and wonder. I've also felt a strong reaction from people who are holding yoga for something other than weight loss, something wrongly perceived as deeper, more intellectual or psychologically superior. There are people who intensely clutch an idea that yoga is a higher system, not to be lowered to the weight loss or even fitness category. This is the same kind of clutching that has kept yoga part of a tightly knit club for so long, since its introduction in America. I am standing up for yoga, because if yoga was a person, she/he would have no part of any superior air.
Yoga in its authentic form is a system of health for the body, mind and spirit. Neglecting an element transforms the practice into something that is not in fact yoga. Spiritual hoping, longing and closed-off-ness perhaps ... but that's not what yoga's about. Yoga is a highly effective system. When practiced authentically and regularly it works and works well. Extra weight -- whether it's physical, emotional or spiritual -- holds us back from our health and our potential. Overeating is a behavior caused by stress, depression, excitement, fun with friends, self-sabotage and countless other feelings, emotions and circumstances. There can always be an occasion to eat and overeat.
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Last week, our families published information that has been gnawing away at us for many months: my brother Josh and his friend Shane Bauer have been beaten while in Evin Prison in Iran and feared that they would be executed shortly after their arrest nearly 23 months ago. Shane and Josh have endured long stretches of solitary confinement, no access to their lawyer, and almost no contact with their families during their 682 days in jail. As if all that were not punishment enough for crimes they never committed, they world now knows that Shane and Josh have suffered physical abuse and psychological torture as well.
Sarah Shourd, Shane's fiancée and Josh's close friend, shared the details of this abuse with our families some time after she was released from 410 days of solitary confinement on payment of $500,000 bail last September. For a long time, I had buried this troubling knowledge away in a place where I would not have to think about it. But sharing it with the world has forced me to try to imagine what it must be like for Shane and Josh in their darkness and isolation. It feels like a kick in the chest. To imagine Josh being forced down a flight of stairs, to imagine him shaking in fear for his life, and to imagine Shane being slammed repeatedly against the wall of their cell makes me angry and sick.
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One of the saddest stories in American politics, which happens all too often, is when small and medium sized community-based businesses lobby against common sense regulations that would help them compete against the big business conglomerates that dominate their industry. Because of a knee-jerk fear of any regulation, a lot of times the big companies will convince their smaller brethren to be the lead lobbyists fighting something that would actually go a long ways in helping the small guys have a more level playing field with the big dogs.
The classic example lately is on banking policy. The six biggest banks in America control assets equaling more than 64 percent of our national GDP, and because they are Too Big To Fail, they end up getting major market advantages over smaller financial institutions. These Wall Street behemoths' economic clout is making it harder and harder for credit unions and smaller community banks to survive, which is a terrible shame because they are the ones who do most investing in small businesses at the local level. In the financial reform bill that was passed last year, most of the regulations that were passed were designed to create oversight of these biggest banks and leave the smaller ones alone, since the problems that caused the financial collapse were all centered in what the big banks were doing, yet the smaller banks and credit unions frequently sided with the big banks out of a mindless fear of any regulation at all.
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Don't let the lackluster ho-hum holiday season cinema schlockfest fool you. 2010 was a stellar year for films. In a break from tradition, quality films did not only turn up during the Oscar-friendly month of December. On the flip side, many entertaining films and inspiring performances were seen in the first half of the year and fall -- so much so I think that's the reason December has been so blah humbug. Had films like The Town, Toy Story 3, or even Easy A opened in multiplexes in the height of the holiday season rather than The Tourist, Little Fockers, or Yogi Bear, it would've felt like a sweeter end to the 2010 film year. But, I'd prefer it this way. As an avid moviegoer, I'd much rather check out great flicks throughout the year rather than cramming as many as I could in a December to remember. Realizing you need another "best of" column from a blogger like you need another Focker sequel, I've kept my column short and to the point. Weigh in on yours!
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Much has been written about how Jane Kim beat San Francisco's "progressive machine" last week to win the District 6 Supervisor race. But a precinct analysis of the election results tells a far bigger story, and explains how she pulled it off. Just like Howard Dean's Fifty State Strategy helped Democrats win nationwide, Jane Kim was everywhere - and conceded no part of District 6. Debra Walker carried the North Mission and a few progressive pockets, but racking up margins in some core precincts is not enough when your opponent actively contests every neighborhood. Kim beat Walker in the Tenderloin (where she had a better operation), and easily won the Chinese precincts - but also carried places like Treasure Island and the Western Addition. And as Jane's field coordinator for condos in Eastern SOMA, I'm very proud she won those precincts by a landslide - as we were the only campaign to show up. These were the Rob Black voters of 2006, but Kim proved that even a progressive can win those neighborhoods - if you bother to talk to them.
The changing demographics of District 6 has been talked about for years. Chris Daly first won the seat with 81% of the vote, but that was before places like Rincon Hill and Mission Bay got thousands of new condos. By 2006, Daly was in trouble. Progressives suddenly had to turn out Tenderloin SRO residents in droves, just to save his re-election.
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While it's shocking front page news that gets our attention like Larry King not having a prenuptial agreement with his seventh wife, the more sensational thing to me is that most people don't really even know who they are marrying ... financially speaking. Otherwise intelligent adults continue to enter into affairs of the wallet with little or no research as to how to protect themselves financially, or more importantly for most, how to protect their credit. As cynical as it may seem, I believe the best time to start talking about credit and financial stability is early in the dating game -- the earlier the better! Don't you want to know if a person is a financial train wreck before you fall in love with them? It's hard to one day buy that nice house in the suburbs with bad credit and no sense of financial responsibility, so take the time to get to know each other, in every sense of the word. While discussing religion, politics and what type of pizza you both enjoy, take extra time to talk about credit, money and long term financial goals.
Romance aside, let's talk about marriage from the practical standpoint. Two individuals decide to merge their lives and "become one." If this is taken to the full extreme, they'll soon share a bank account, a joint credit report and a family budget. So how do you really know that Mr. or Mrs. Right is truly Mr. or Mrs. Financial Right?
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In a recent editorial in the New York Times, former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, writes that this Labor Day promises to be one of the worst in decades. Organized labor, he notes, is down to a mere seven per cent of the private work force; unemployment remains high; and the prospects for a further recovery of the economy remain uncertain at best. Professor Reich goes on to argue that this dismal state of affairs is unlikely to improve until we address the deep structural flaws in our economy; flaws which have made it impossible for the American consumer -- i.e. the middle class American worker -- to sustain the level of spending needed to keep our economy going.
He rightly blames this state of affairs on the steady decline in working wages that has occurred in the past three decades as US companies brought in new labor-saving technologies or shipped jobs to non-unionized low wage areas overseas. He also correctly points out that much of the economic growth that the US has experienced since the early 1990s -- growth that occurred in spite of the fall in wages -- was fueled by three basic phenomenon: the vast increase of women in the work force; an increase in the number of hours people worked to make up for lower wages; and the massive use of consumer debt, fueled in part by the housing bubble.
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On Friday, The New York Times reported that the State of New York is planning to murder approximately 170,000 Canada geese, as part of a strategy to increase the safety of passenger aircraft. The Times quotes the Department of Agriculture as approving of the plan, with an official stating that the state is "leading the way." The geese would be put in crates, gassed, and buried.
I'm a bit surprised that more attention isn't being paid to this barbaric plan, which seems to have been relatively uncontroversial. In fact, the geese-killings are being reported quite lightly. The multi-agency report recommending the slaughter was amicably agreed to by all involved, merely pointing out that the geese were not meeting current "population goals." The Albany Herald cheerfully punned that the geese were running "afowl," and back when Canada geese first started being vilified by New Yorkers (when they put Flight 1549 in the Hudson River), the New York Post quoted a "wildlife biologist" as suggesting that gassing didn't go far enough:
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If you heard about the White House poetry event this past Wednesday, you probably heard about it for the wrong reasons. The decision to invite hip-hop artist and actor Common to read poetry drew a surprising amount of furor from the right. Former Bush senior advisor Karl Rove and Fox News host Sean Hannity, among others, offered their in-depth analysis of Common's lyrics, coming off like a couple of flustered freshmen in a poetry workshop. I suppose such strange distractions are to be expected in the weeks after your political enemy kills Osama bin Laden, but the Common silliness was unfortunate, as it tarnished what was otherwise a great day for poetry.
On Wednesday afternoon, Michelle Obama hosted a poetry workshop at the White House for 77 young poets who were flown to Washington for the event. The workshop featured former poets laureate Rita Dove and Billy Collins, and the inaugural poet (and friend of the President and First Lady) Elizabeth Alexander. The First Lady lauded the young poets for taking emotional risks and striving to connect, and she admitted that growing up, she leaned on her writing and was a bit of a poet herself. The professionals offered advice as well, most of it inspiring, and some more realistic, as when the always-entertaining Billy Collins quipped, "You shouldn't worry about whether you're good now. You probably aren't that good, but you'll get better. There is hope."
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When students and parents think of standardized entrance exams, the SAT and ACT immediately come to mind. Like it or not, they are a major factor in determining the undergraduate future of college-bound students -- the prestige of the colleges to which they are accepted, the amount of financial aid they will be awarded, and the quality of other students comprising their collegiate social milieu. However, for many students in New York City, the less well-known high school exam, the SHSAT (Specialized High School Admissions Test) may be the most important standardized test of their academic careers.
The SHSAT is similar to the SAT and ACT; it is multiple-choice and divided into two main sections, Verbal and Mathematics. For each of the two main sections, students receive a scaled score of 200 to 800 and, in addition, a composite-scaled score, which is the sum of the two sections. What makes this test so crucial and applicants so fiercely competitive is that the score is the sole criterion for admission to these specialized schools. Students select in order of preference up to eight schools and are assigned to their first-choice down to their last-choice, in rank-order of their scores until all available places in each of those schools are filled. The absolute score is not significant as long as it is higher than the cut-off score for any of the eight schools, which is determined by the results of all the students taking the test that year and their school preferences.
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Erica Jong wrote an article called "Mother Madness "about attachment-style parenting. It was published in the Wall Street Journal. She said, "Aspiring to be perfect parents seems like a pathetic attempt to control what we can while ignoring problems that seem beyond our reach." She was reacting against what she perceives as a suffocating trend. A rapidly spreading horde of self-proclaimed expert mommies armed with recycled diaper bags full of toxic organic diapers. She writes about the popular breastfeeding wars, refutes the idea that being with your kid a lot is inherently good for her/him, and generally doesn't say anything that hasn't already been said ad nauseam in every other piece about womanhood for years. I was bored by the second paragraph.
So instead I read some entertaining fluff. An article about beauty in Psychology Today. It contained such gems as:
"Now, before you brand me a traitor to my gender, let me say that I'm all for women having the vote, and I think a woman with a mustache should make the same money as a man with a mustache. But you don't help that woman by advising her, 'No need to wax that lip fringe or work off that beer belly!' (Because the road to female empowerment is...looking just like a hairy old man?)"
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Sometimes, the most revealing aspect of the shrieking babble of the 24/7 news agenda is the silence. Often the most important facts are hiding beneath the noise, unmentioned and undiscussed. So the fact that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is facing trial for allegedly raping a maid in a New York hotel room is -- rightly -- big news. But imagine a prominent figure was charged not with raping a maid, but starving her to death, along with her children, her parents, and thousands of other people. That is what the IMF has done to innocent people in the recent past. That is what it will do again, unless we transform it beyond all recognition. But that is left in the silence.
To understand this story, you have to reel back to the birth of the IMF. In 1944, the countries that were poised to win the Second World War gathered in a hotel in rural New Hampshire to divvy up the spoils. With a few honorable exceptions, like the great British economist John Maynard Keynes, the negotiators were determined to do one thing. They wanted to build a global financial system that ensured the money and resources of the planet were forever hoovered towards them. They set up a series of institutions designed for that purpose -- and so the IMF was delivered into the world.
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Los Angeles heads to the polls today to decide on a range of local ballot measures, City Council races and local school boards. Without many national or statewide candidates on the ballot, turnout is expected to be low, but the races are still heated with big money involved. Among the more closely watched measures on todays ballot are LA's Measure L (allocating funds for the City's library system), Measure M (tax on medical marijuana collectives), and Measure O (tax on oil drilled in city limits). Marina Del Rey Patch has a full round-up of LA candidates and ballot measures, as well as a look at the big money being spent on local races.
An "uncommonly bitter" City Council race in West Hollywood has been the focus of some national attention after the New York Times profiled it as a battle between "prosperity and urban development pitted against the city's history as a countercultural haven." Check West Hollywood Patch for a round-up of the candidates, measures and poll information in today's election.
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On a frigid December night I squeezed into the Sub T Lounge in Wicker Park to warm up beneath the undulating Balkan rhythms of Black Bear Combo. A major player in the brass-band renaissance that's taken over Chicago's alternative music scene, Black Bear is a six-man outfit that infuses eastern-European party music with jazz, rock and funk influences. As you can imagine, this is a recipe for sheer dance madness. I've seen Black Bear at a few clubs around town, but they also play weddings and funerals--the latter being perhaps problematic, as the band's sounds are so infectious the departed might be prompted to climb out of the casket and get down with his bad self.
Most of the group's tunes are originals penned by saxophonist Doug Abram; he gets avid, athletic support from Rob Pleshar on sousaphone, Gerald Bailey on trumpet, Andrew Zeim on euphonium, Dersu Barrows on bass drum, and Eshan Ghoreishi on accordion and daf (Persian frame drum). The rhythms are all fast, and all delightfully sinuous, but still utterly distinctive; within the admittedly narrow boundaries of the sound world Black Bear Combo has staked out, they manage to mine endless variety. Over the course of the evening they may edge towards tonal anarchy, or achieve a sweetness you might almost call refined; but they never repeat themselves, and they never flag. And you, humble patron, never get the chance to sit down and take a breath. What the hell, life's too short for breathing anyway.
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Now Sarah Palin likes Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele. Her new found political romance with Steele couldn't have come at a more needed time for the beleaguered chairman. Steele's shoot-from-the-lip media grandstanding, gaffes, fundraising shenanigans, profligate spending, and put down of the Afghan war have driven nearly every faction of the GOP from mainstream traditionalists to ultra-conservatives bonkers. The screams for his head reached a near tipping point a few months back. But with the crucial mid-terms bearing down, Obama's plunge in the polls, and a string of Palin successes backing bizarre, underdog, insurgent candidates, Steele got a reprieve.
Palin extended that reprieve with her shout out to him on Fox News. She'll headline two fundraising rallies with him this month. So why the sudden political love fest with Steele? Well for one, Steele has been more than willing, no eager, to play ball with her. He's done it in two ways. Outside of Palin, he's the loudest and most visible national figure that's been willing to sing the praises of any one that carries the Tea Party imprimatur-- Sharon Angle, Joe Miller, Christine O'Donnell, and Rand Paul. It doesn't matter how wacky, way out, or silly they look and sound. They're Tea Party. They won primaries, and they beat down the GOP establishment. One or more of them will likely flame out in November. But that doesn't much matter. For the moment at least they've rocked the GOP mainstream, and fired up the loathe Obama grassroots crowd.
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